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School Librarians as OER Curators: A Framework to Guide Practice: Crosswalk to Standards

Module 6

Crosswalk to Prevailing School Librarian Practice Standards

This short module provides a high level overview of how the process of OER curation links to two prevailing standards that guide school librarian professional practice:

  1. The National School Library Standards for Learners, School Librarians, and School Libraries, by the American Association of School Librarians (AASL), and

  2. the Future Ready Librarians Framework, by the Alliance for Excellent Education.

Crosswalk Table

The table below offers a simplified crosswalk between common skills emphasized across the two sets of standards, and the practice of OER curation. We welcome school librarians to adapt and add to this crosswalk, as they work to articulate the links between OER and their professional practice.

SL Skill Area Example Prevailing Standards Links to OER Curation Practice

Inclusion and Accessibility

AASL: School librarian (SL) demonstrates an understanding of and commitment to inclusiveness and respect for diversity in the learning community.

Future Ready: SL creates inclusive collections that acknowledge and celebrate diverse experiences.

​Through open licensing, SLs are able to access and innovate in the alignment of materials to local accessibility needs and to students’ unique learning affordances.

The adaptable nature of OER also enables SLs to localize their curation projects and make them relevant so that they speak to the diversity of their learners.

Self Directed Learning

AASL: SL challenges learners to act on an information needs by modeling and guiding students in self-directed, information gathering behaviors.

Future Ready: SL encourages and facilitates students to become increasingly self-directed as they create digital products of their learning.

SL invites learners into their curation process as co-curators, reviewers and editors of open materials that are curated.

SL supports learners in becoming “producers” who  contribute to scholarship as published authors of assignments.

Digital Citizenship

AASL: School librarians contribute to and guide information resource exchange within and beyond the school learning context.

Future Ready: SL advocates for equitable access to collection tools using digital resources, programming, and services.

SL encourages teachers and learners to share their work as OER, and helps to make these resources discoverable for future users by organizing them and adding metadata.

SL models and trains school stakeholders on how to use, share, attribute, adapt, and remix openly licensed resources based on knowledge of use permissions.

SL encourages the use of tools and collections that are freely accessible and openly licensed, and that help to advance principles of equity and access in education.

Collaboration

AASL: SL provides an environment in which resources that support the school’s curriculum and learning goals can be collaboratively selected and developed.

Future Ready: SL provides flexible spaces that promote inquiry, creativity, collaboration, and community; SL partners with educators to design and implement evidence-based curricula and assessments.

 SL invites teachers and learners to participate in the collaborative curation  of learning experiences — from the articulation of the curation goals based on identified needs, to gathering their feedback on and refining curation outputs.